How to display a picture of a content author in the results pages of Google? What sites are eligible for this possibility and its limits? Zoom on SEO technique which can improve visibility and traffic.
It is increasingly common to see a picture of a content author in the pages of Google results. After the Google+ profile, this picture is accompanied by information related to the name of the author, and sometimes the date of publication of content and the number of times that the profile has been circled in Google+. These elements, called Rich Snippets , which enrich the result, and often differentiate it from competitors.
The impact can be felt on the Click-Through Rate (CTR), the ratio between the number of impressions for the page in the Google search results and the number of clicks it could attract. The effect may be beneficial, although it remains difficult to measure.
More than that, if a user clicks on a content author, remains long enough on the page, then back to the results page, it will be offered other contents of same author , which will therefore provide an attractive bonus of visibility in the results pages. A bonus for the time reserved for the results generated by Google.com, but the engine could soon spread to the rest of the world.
While setting up the tag author guarantee the appearance of the photo
The photo to appear in the authors' results is quite simple. It is obviously necessary that the author has a Google+ profile with a photo, which is preferably a portrait of face: no logo or designs, which may not appear.
Then, the source code of the site must inform the author tag. This often takes the following form:
rel = "author" ref = "https://plus.google.com/Xxxx"
Xxxx must be 21 digits identifying the Google+ member (found in the URL of each profile). In the "Bio" Google+ profile, it is advisable to inform the "Also author of" putting a link to the site hosting the content the author.
There is also another method to associate content to a Google+ profile to using a validated e-mail address , but it must have an e-mail on the same domain as the content.
If these procedures are followed correctly, the picture will appear in the results. Therefore, Google has never explained, but only some queries will raise the content associated with the photo in the results.
E-commerce sites eligible
This technique has been adopted by many bloggers, and has also spread to several news sites. But nothing prevents to implement it on other sites, including those dedicated to e-commerce. Some of e-commerce actors refuse to see the private profiles photos appear in results, or have not considered beneficial for their image to associate pictures of people in their content. It is indeed necessary in advance asking editors to have a Google+ profile, and then they agree to give visibility to business purposes.
For sites to which several writers contribute, it is obviously possible to associate multiple profiles Google+. The same site or the same heading may be connected to several writers with good lighting. Finally, note that it is possible to show a picture of an author next to content that was not written. A simple comment correctly associated with a link to the profile page of Google allow this profile pretending to be the author of the content. A flaw that could be exploited to cause harm to a site or artificially enhance the authority of a Google+ profile, but
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